Take It Off (18 page)

“I guess you're right,” Suki said, even though she knew nothing of my Flan urgency.

“I think the best thing for us to do is try to make it to my dad's house in London,” I said very levelly. “If he's there, he'll get us back to the States.”

“How are we going to get to London?”

“Can we think about that tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

We paid our bill in coins—which felt really strange—and went off to find a hotel room.

Suki had been to Barcelona on a family vacation, and she seemed to remember it pretty well. We were in the old town, and the street we were on, which was wide and had a big promenade in the center with lots of cafés and tall trees, was called Las Ramblas. Supposedly there were lots of cheap hotels in the little streets that ran off of it. In addition to all the Spanish people who seemed to be lazing about in the late afternoon, there were lots of backpackers, with dreadlocks and mangy-looking dogs, sitting on the sidewalks or walking around. It was sort of like the kids on Saint Marks in the East Village, except these kids really looked like they hadn't been home in years.

We got lost again, of course. Barcelona looked a lot like Palma on Mallorca had, with ancient stone streets that twisted and turned illogically, and nineteenth-century apartment buildings built close together. It was more dirty and urban, though. The shutters all looked bolted down, and when we took a wrong turn, which was pretty
much all we were doing, the corner we turned into more than likely smelled like piss.

There were hotels everywhere, but every time we walked into one the clerk looked at us and made an ominous hand gesture and said,
“Lleno! Lleno.”

Eventually, when I was near the point of despair and convinced that my loafers were close to shoe death, Suki clapped her hands and shouted, “Yes!” I looked up at a thin, crumbling building with a really old sign that read HOSTEL LA CUCARACHA. I stared in disbelief, but Suki obviously felt good about it, so I followed her in and up to the second floor.

A tired-looking woman, who looked suspiciously like the clerk at the Mallorca Cucaracha, looked up at us as we came in. Suki smiled broadly.

Suki conferred with the clerk, and then told me that there was good news and bad news. Miraculously they had one room left and they did take cards. The room was fifty-five euros, though, and Suki was worried that her bank would reject the charge.

“What's the worst that can happen?” I asked.

“I'd just be surprised if I have enough with the
exchange rate, that's all.”

She handed over her debit card, and after a few tense moments it cleared. The woman gave us the key, and we climbed up the rickety old stairs to our room. I don't need to tell you what the room looked like—it was the same icky kind of room we stayed at in Mallorca. We lay down in the sandpaper blankets, and pretty soon we were sleeping.

I slept for a long time, and I dreamt of an endless succession of holiday parties in a snow white New York with Flan on my arm. She was wearing her clingy red sweater, and her white wool circle skirt, and her cheeks were all pink from eggnog and she smelled like sugar and spice and …

Arno had been sitting at the outdoor café for at least an hour, and none of the busy waiters had noticed him. They all wore black pants and long white aprons, and they looked perfectly efficient. But still, none of them had noticed Arno sitting there by himself. It was the exact opposite of New York, where everybody paid attention to him and were usually so stunned by his beauty that they also bought him things.

Nobody had bought him anything here. The cathedrals were all ringing seven o'clock, and he wanted food more than anything, and a cold beer to wash it down, and he was ready to pay for it. But he couldn't get the waiters to look at him. After an afternoon of wandering the filthy, foreign streets of Barcelona looking for that little thief Pablo, Arno had told himself that things couldn't get much worse than they already were. But, of course, he had been proven wrong.

Finally, Arno was so angry at the waiters for not serving him that he got up and left.

Earlier, when he had been searching for Pablo, he had passed a place called Hostel La Cucaracha. It didn't look nice (in fact, it looked kind of seedy), but he had the general sense that a hostel was where American kids backpacking through Europe went. Arno used his last little bit of clarity to conclude that the people who worked at such a place might speak American pretty well.

When he climbed the stairs to the second-floor lobby he saw a very cranky-looking woman sitting behind a desk. She didn't even look at him, she just said,
“El hotel está lleno.”
Arno recognized that phrase from the Imperial, and it didn't bode well.

“I want a room,” he said plaintively.

“Is full,” the clerk said.

“Please,” Arno said. He was feeling really desperate. “A couch, anything?”

“Out!” she said.

Arno nearly fell down the stairs, humiliated again and hoping she wouldn't remember his face and tell anyone. He went out into the street, where night had fallen, and stumbled down in the direction of the dock where he had left Mickey that morning. When he got there, he smelled the ocean and it reminded him of Barker Island and how angry he had been at Mickey, and how cute Greta was, sort of. He looked at all the
happy people taking their evening stroll, and he hated them.

“Mickey!” he yelled at no one in particular. “Mickey, help me! I'm sorry.” The strollers backed away from him and went in the other direction. Arno saw a man selling beers out of a cooler on the dock, and walked over. He held up his index and middle fingers, to indicate that he wanted two beers. The man smiled at him, and Arno saw that he had no teeth.
I'm going to end up like this guy,
Arno thought
I'm never getting out of here.
He took the beers, threw a twenty euro note at the guy, and hurried away without waiting for his change.

He staggered off the docks and down the beach, dragging his bag behind him. As he walked, he chugged one beer and then the other, throwing the empty bottles behind him. He kept on as long as he could, calling out Mickey's name, until he was too hoarse and exhausted to go any farther. Then he collapsed on top of his bag.

“Hey,” Patch said to Greta, who had come up behind him but hadn't really surprised him. He hadn't seen her all day, but he'd had a feeling she'd be back around. He hadn't talked to anyone since that morning, when the
Ariadne
had left Barcelona without his friends.

“Hey,” she said quietly, passing him a warm mug. She was holding one, too. “It's whiskey with honey and lemon.”

The weather had turned soon after they left Barcelona, and they were both wearing sweaters.

“Thanks. Where'd you get it?”

“Barker gave it to me. He said he thought it was probably okay, since I was sick. He said I should bring you one, too.”

“Oh. Are you sick?”

Greta gave him a quizzical look and said, “Haven't you noticed that I haven't been around since yesterday morning?”

“Yeah, of course …”

“I was in the nurse's office, and then in my cabin with a fever. I guess that survival test did me in.”

“Oh. That's too bad. At least you won't be missing any day trips.”

After Mickey and Arno's fight, Barker had made an announcement curtailing most day trips and restricting Ocean Term's activities to onboard classes, talks, and recreation. Which was probably a good thing since the weather report said it would be raining in most of their destinations. There was only a light mist now, though. They both looked out at the dark ocean and sipped their drinks.

“I guess we really fucked up, huh?” Greta said after a while.

“Yeah … I mean, no, you didn't. But I feel pretty stupid. I mean, I ended up being Barker's pet, which I never planned to be. And now everybody has this idea of me that's totally false.”

“I don't think you care very much what everybody thinks of you,” Greta said shyly.

“I guess. All I wanted was to see cool places and hang out with my friends, and now all my friends are lost. I guess you call that ironic. I'm usually the one who's out of touch and can't be found.”

“Maybe you like it that way.”

Patch stopped talking because he always felt uncomfortable when conversations dwelled on him this way.

“Anyway, I'm sorry I didn't know you were sick. I could have brought you flowers or something if we weren't stuck on this boat.” He took a sip of his drink and added, “If Mickey or Arno were still on board, they probably would have figured out a way.”

“Hey, I know those guys are your friends, but they're kind of assholes.”

Patch laughed. “I know. They just
liked
you … and Suki.”

Greta laughed awkwardly, and then paused like she was thinking out how to say something in her head. “Yeah. I mean, they're cute, but they're dicks, too. That's why …”

She stopped talking, and Patch almost felt bad for her, she looked so uncomfortable.

“That's why what?”

“Oh, it's too embarrassing.” Greta covered her face with her hands. They were fair and pinkish like the rest of her.

“Hey. Those guys aren't dicks, and neither am I. Whatever it is, it can't be
that
embarrassing.”

“Well, that's why I told everybody I had a boyfriend. Because I didn't want to have to deal with
all
that
…” She giggled awkwardly, then continued talking at a rapid pace. “And that probably sounds really dorky. I mean, I'm sure they weren't even that into me anyway. Guys usually like Suki, and … But I'm sort of shy, you know what I mean, and … protective of myself …and …”

Patch looked at her in amazement. She was so awkward and spilling over with feeling, like a skittish kitten. It made him want to be very close to her. He put his hand over her mouth, and he could feel her cheeks heating up against his palm.

“You don't have a boyfriend?”

She shook her head, her lips grazing his palm. So he wrapped her up in his sweatered arms and kissed her. She was warm and smelled clean, almost like baby powder, and he pressed her up against him and kept on kissing her for a long time.

They were only interrupted once, briefly, by Sara-Beth Benny, who was walking by with that guy Loki, Arno's RA. They looked pretty friendly.

“Hey, cuties,” she said, laughing as she walked by and winking heavily. She was wearing a fur that looked like some small animal thrown over her small shoulders. Her eyes were bright and she leaned on Loki as they walked by. “Oh,
psstt
, by the way, Patch,” she said, lowering her voice as though that alone
would prevent Loki or Greta from hearing, “Stephanie's been, you know, looking for you.”

Mickey's night at Angelina's restaurant turned into a very late night and then a morning at Angelina's place. She lived with her boyfriend, Eduardo, in a huge, ornate house down a little street in the old town. It had been designed by a famous architect and it was all mirrors and dark wood and baroque detail inside. All their friends lived with them, and none of them seemed to work much. In fact, Angelina, whose parents owned the house and seemed to have a lot of money, was the only one with an actual job. Besides Eduardo, who was her family's accountant.

When she and Mickey arrived, there were people lounging around the haremlike central room and smoking pot. Angelina didn't bother to make introductions, she just moved into the most visible seat in the room, made herself comfortable, and sat Mickey down beside her. She put his head in her lap and began to rub it as though it were a crystal ball. Mickey wondered which of the many guys in the room was Eduardo, but he
couldn't figure it out. Angelina told everyone the story of how Mickey had finished the paella for two by himself, and all her friends laughed. They were beautiful and smoked a lot and stayed up late every night and made grand statements about art and death that Mickey thought were kind of stupid. He liked being one of them, though. It was like a twenty-four-hour party back in New York. It was like something that might happen at Patch's house.

“Ey, what did you say your name was?” a guy in spectacles asked Mickey. The guy was dressed like a nineteenth-century revolutionary, and his clothes were paint-spattered.

Mickey looked at him blearily and thought to say that he hadn't said what his name was at all. He couldn't quite get that out, though, so he just said, “Mickey Pardo.”

“You bear a resemblance to the famous sculptor Ricardo Pardo,
verdad
?”

Mickey sighed. This was the
last
thing he wanted to talk about. “He's my dad.”

Everyone got very excited and chattered about how Mickey was the son of a famous artist. They asked him his opinion on a whole range of topics, and pestered him for details of his father's genius. Then they all seemed to collectively forget, and began chattering
about something else.

Hours passed like that, and pretty soon Mickey wasn't sure if it was day or night. It seemed a long time ago that he and Arno had split up on the docks, and that made him kind of sad.

“Don't you ever go outside?” Mickey murmured to Angelina, in English this time.

“You want to go outside?” she asked him. Then she clapped her hands grandly.
“Vamos afuera!”

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Hey man. I haven't heard from you in a few days, so I hope you're OK over there. Rob told me that he wired you a lot of money, so you're probably doing fine and having fun which is cool. I had tea with Amanda the other day. She cried a lot, but I think I might finally be over it. I mean, she's sort of boring, once you get to know her and the mystique is gone, you know what I mean? You'd be proud of me man: I totally don't even care anymore. Oh, and I went to a show at CBGB's with this friend of Feb's called Caroline. Not sure I'm really into her though, she's a little gruff, you know? Been playing a lot of ball, yada yada. Anyway, about what you asked me about Flan and everything, I haven't seen Rob in a
couple days, actually since the night you talked to him, so I wouldn't worry. I'm still watching Flan like you asked me to though, so don't worry about that. Just a question though, I thought you sort of tried to break up with Flan before we left. So why are you so worried about her and Rob or really, her and anybody? See you, David.